The ethical use of NLP influence when coaching clients

As an NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist sometimes people expect me to be doing all sorts of Derren Brown-like stuff on them, making them give me their wallets or persuading them to do things against their will.

While knowledge of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis can certainly be used for developing more effective messages, I think that people who use it in the hopes of making everyone do what they say have kind of missed the point.

The point of learning NLP for me was to be able to understand people more, to acknowledge how they operate and to meet them where they are.

It has taught me to respect people's thought processes, their experiences and to open my mind to their way of seeing the world.

As a by-product of understanding people, I naturally find that people are more willing to listen to what I have to say. Because they feel understood, respected and listened to. Sometimes that's a conscious thing and sometimes it is an entirely unconscious processes and they don't even know why they trust me, but they do.

Trust is the cornerstone of persuasion - if you are behaving unethically, at some point you will meet a sticky end.

If you can garner trust from people, they are more likely to want to comply with your requests rather than you exercising some magical Ming-like power over them, compelling them to do your bidding.

In essence, NLP is about empathy and understanding people. It can also be used to help people choose another way of looking at the world. But in order to do that you have to be able to understand where they are coming from in the world. Respect that first, show you understand, and only then can people be guided by you to make more useful decisions.